“Harlem Timeline” serves as a tribute to Harlem luminaries. In this expansive mosaic mural, they are seen mingling with neighborhood residents. On the downtown platform, we see Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Langston Hughes, Joe Louis, and Charlie Parker in action. The blues - both the musical form and the color - are represented on the uptown side, with Billie Holiday, bathed in indigo. Elsewhere, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Paul Robeson, John Coltrane, and Thelonious Monk express themselves, rejoining the community where the Harlem Renaissance all began. Some of the visual references that Birch weaves into the work are African-American quilts, textile designs of Mexico and Africa, and visionary folk art.

Willie Birch is a New Orleans native and one of Louisiana’s most significant living artists. He first came to prominence for his papier-maché sculptures that depicted African American men, women, and children engaged in common activities and rituals. In 1993, a John S. Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Award brought him back to New Orleans, where he began producing the work he is best known for—large-scale, graphic drawings of African-American life in New Orleans. Birch has been the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including the Pollock Krasner Foundation, The Joan Mitchell Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He was named the USA James Baldwin Fellow in 2014. Birch’s work has been included in numerous group exhibitions throughout the country and a retrospective of his work, “Celebrating Freedom: The Art of Willie Birch,” was organized by the Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans, in 2016 and travelled nationally.